Nintendo Co Ltd’s first official mobile app, Miitomo, launched worldwide last week, and it has already surged to the top of the download charts in the App Store.

My first impression toward Miitomo was one of confusion. Why did Nintendo make this? Is this really how they want to break into the world of mobile games? What’s up with the creepy robot voices? No seriously, why did they make this?

After playing around with Miitomo for a few hours, I came to the conclusion that I hate it, and also I can’t stop playing with it.

What’s the point of Miitomo?

Miitomo is a social app designed for the Facebook stalker in all of us.

If you ever wanted to know all of the boring little details about someone’s life without actually having to go through the trouble of talking to them or getting to know them as a person, then Miitomo is the perfect app for you.

On top of that, when you talk to one of your friends’ Miis directly, you can answer private questions that are “just between us,” allowing you to exchange dirty messages while dressed up like Mario or a loaf of bread, if you are into that (not that you can’t also do that on other social apps, but that would require a bit more work on your part).

Nintendo underestimated the internet—again

Nintendo is no stranger to seeing its users finding creative and, uh, graphic ways to abuse its chat programs. After all, the company was forced to remove internet functionality from Swapnote, a hand-drawn messaging program on the 3DS, due to “misuse.”

“Nintendo has learned that some consumers, including minors, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote (known as Nintendo Letter Box in other regions) to exchange offensive material,” Nintendo explained in a statement at the time.

So it comes as little surprise that users have been hard at work abusing Miitomo since it was released, particularly with the “Miifoto” feature, which allows users to pose their Miis in front of various backgrounds and add their own text.

Miitomo certainly has room for improvement, but it still somehow manages to be entertaining despite its shortcomings.

Whether or not it will be able to hook people long enough to still be useful when the novelty has worn off remains to be seen, but hopefully by then Nintendo will have released the Mario or Zelda game we all wanted for our smartphones in the first place.

Image courtesy of Nintendo Co Ltd